Daily Crunch - Apple's Phil Schiller steps back

There’s a new executive in charge of Apple’s marketing, Facebook signs a big lease for New York real estate and “Mulan” is coming to Disney+. Here’s your Daily Crunch for August 4, 2020.

The big story: Apple's Phil Schiller takes smaller role

Schiller is taking on a new role as an Apple Fellow, where he will continue to lead the App Store and the company’s events. Replacing Schiller and taking charge of the company’s marketing is Greg Joswiak, an Apple product marketing veteran.

Schiller has been with Apple since 1987, serving on the executive team for more than two decades, and has been a frequent presence onstage at Apple events. He will continue to report directly to CEO Tim Cook in his new role.

“Phil has helped make Apple the company it is today and his contributions are broad, vast, and run deep,” CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. “In this new role he will continue to provide the incredible thought partnership, and guidance that have defined his decades at Apple.”

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The tech giants

Facebook doubles down on work-from-office with massive NYC lease near Penn Station — Facebook has secured the main office lease on the James A. Farley Building, located one block south of Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan.

Google-Fitbit deal to be scrutinized in Europe over data competition concerns — This means the deal is on ice for a period that could last until early December.

Apple’s 27-inch iMac gets a processing and graphics boost — Top-level changes here include the addition of the 10th-gen Comet Lake processors that Intel revealed back in April.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Microsoft, Amazon back a SoCal company making microchips specifically for voice-based apps — Syntiant makes semiconductors for voice recognition and speech-based applications, with data flow architecture that it claims was built for deep learning.

Rippling nabs $145M at a $1.35B valuation to build out its all-in-one platform for employee data — Rippling was founded by Parker Conrad to take on the ambitious challenge of building a platform to manage all aspects of employee data, from payroll and benefits through to device management.

Serialized fiction startup Radish raises $63.2M from SoftBank and Kakao — Its most popular title, “Torn Between Alphas” (a romance story with werewolves) has released 10 seasons in less than a year, with each season consisting of more than 50 chapters that come out multiple times a day.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Software stocks set new records despite earnings, pandemic — Yesterday, the Bessemer-Nasdaq cloud index closed at 2,035.54, a new record finish for the basket of software companies.

Extra Crunch Live: Join fintech legend Max Levchin for a live Q&A on August 6 at 4pm ET/1pm PT — Levchin is CEO of Affirm, one of the hottest finance startups around right now, and before that he co-founded PayPal.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our subscription membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

‘Mulan’ is coming to Disney+ on September 4, for an additional price of $29.99 — “Mulan” and Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” were expected to be the first big movies in theaters whenever they reopened.

Ford names Jim Farley as new CEO, Jim Hackett to retire — Hackett had been tapped to transform the automaker into a leaner, more competitive and profitable company.

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